


Prologue: Fear No Evil

by Wikiaddicted723



Series: A Slow Death Would Be Kinder [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Everything is awful, Gen, PTSD, Post-Infinity War, Speculative, people die in the most stupid ways, there's hope shinning at the far end of the tu--oh nevermind, you can take the girl out of the soviet union but you can't take the soviet union out of the girl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 17:36:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6817267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wikiaddicted723/pseuds/Wikiaddicted723
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If war is hell, are we the demons, or the damned? </p><p>On the television, again and again: applause, bang, nothing.</p><p>[Post-Infinity War].</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prologue: Fear No Evil

_I was made heavy_

_half blade and half silk_

_difficult to forget and not easy_

_for the mind to follow_

_— Rupi Kaur_

 

***

 

The cameras keep rolling. The world ended, five days ago, and through it all the cameras kept rolling. Maybe that's the legacy humanity will leave behind, after there is no one left willing to give life and limb to defend it. Maybe that'll be all that's left when the time comes for the universe's next go-round at fucking them over. The cameras rolling, and in the distance nothing but desolation and corpses.

Clint would laugh at the thinking. It's the Russian in you, he'd say, if he were speaking to her at all. If she was still someone worth his effort, still someone worth his time.

(She couldn't see him die again. Couldn't see any of them die again. Together or not at all, no matter the cost).

Natasha was not made for selflessness. Unlike Clint, Steve had always understood that. Steve chose to see good in her regardless. In the end, Steve took the fall, and there were no more chances for do-overs. No time stone, and no reboots. Just a bullet through the eye from a mile away, on the morning of a beautiful day meant for victory.

The moment is immortal, indelible. It's on camera, obviously; they're still rolling. They were rolling when he gave his speech. Applause, bang, nothing.

Terror saturates the airways. In that way it's no different than two weeks ago, two months ago, two decades ago. Terror is a constant. _Breaking: Stark Industries to Spear-head Reconstruction. Breaking: UN Discussing Formation of Galactic Defense Group_. _Avengers Official Roster to Expand Pending Review._ _Breaking: Captain America's Murderer Found Dead in Holding Cell, Ruled Suicide, Allegations of Foul Play Inconclusive._ She could ask to change the channel, but she doesn't. It’s the same news everywhere; it wouldn't do much.

“What happened out there, Natasha?”

“We lost, Nick,” Natasha says, staring without seeing at the volunteer reconstruction crews mobilizing down the street. She keeps still, doesn’t fidget. Crying doesn’t work, was unlearned as anything other than an engine for deception decades ago. She can’t—it doesn’t matter that she wants to. “We lost.”

Fury leans back against the booth, cracked leather groaning under the weight he’s put on over the past few years. Retirement doesn’t agree with him, fraudulent as it is. He sighs. Says, “World’s still spinning, far as I can see.”

Maybe it'd be better if it wasn't, Natasha doesn't say. She says, “You need me for something,” and it's not a question. Nick Fury doesn't socialize, and he doesn't trust, not really. It's the thing about kindred spirits—they seek each other out.

“I do.” Fury slides a hard drive onto the formica table. Stark-tech, latest design, latest technology. It's not even on the market yet. It seems banal; puny—somewhere inside she laughs. Somewhere in the multiverse, there's a horned god watching, rejoicing, in stitches. “Unfinished business,” Fury explains. “The kind that takes advantage of a world that’s too distracted rebuilding.”

What's an(other) alien invasion to a race bent on its own destruction? What's the death of one man to thousands of years of ongoing, slow implosion? Natasha takes the hard drive, tucks it into her purse. She says, “I’ll see what I can do.”

She looks out the window into the street and sees the aftermath of chaos, still. And she sees, also, people helping, or trying to help, or walking listlessly, not knowing what to do with themselves. Rubble and wreckage and death, and people enduring, people alive, people with futures, who'll get to wake up one more time, and love, and laugh.

Natasha'd've let them all die in exchange for a handful of lives. In at least one iteration of the world, she already has.

On the television, again and again: applause, bang, nothing. Time to get back to work.

 

***

 

It’s a quiet affair, the funeral. That in itself is almost more than anyone could have hoped for, under the circumstances. Bucky knows this. He can’t quite bring himself to be grateful for it—he knows what it cost, what he owes, the kind of political maneuvering that had to be done to avoid making a worldwide spectacle of the token burial, to keep the body from becoming one of the most valuable dissection-ready specimens the scientific community ever acquired.

Certain parties had needed to be reminded that the U.S of A’s golden boy and the process that made him had been patented by one Howard Anthony Stark half a century ago. Cue Proprietary Bio-technology citations, heavy threats to sue with the backing of a top shelf legal department and a repository of blackmail material guaranteed to put every single person in Capitol Hill behind bars, and the most powerful government on earth rolled over on command.

So. Captain America is given full military honours, a posthumous presidential pardon that’s for the record only and studiously not publicized, and a monument for people who know no better to gawk at—and for fucking what?

To wash their hands so they can avoid leaving bloody marks when they pat each other’s backs. To make themselves a martyr, a symbol to be twisted according to the times. Destroy the man.

Then again, Bucky thinks—and it’s a thought he has echoes of, is nearly certain he’s thought before—Steve Rogers was proclaimed killed in action the day Abraham Erskine pointed and said “that one.” All this is just the world catching up to the fact, late as usual.

(Maybe if he keeps telling himself that the emptiness in his chest will close up like any other scar).

When the Private kneels to offer the folded flag Bucky stays rooted to the spot, unable to move, unable to step forward. Carter squeezes his good shoulder, firm enough he knows the touch is real, harmlessly enough that he can keep from decking her, can pull himself off the edge he’s been hovering over all fucking morning, starting with the three fucking volleys from the fucking rifles he forgot to brace for. She steps forward with arms bent, palms up to receive the folded cloth like one would a child. Cradling it.

Cradle. The specificity of words is harder to achieve the more the memories crawl out from the recesses of his restructured brain like monsters out of the woodwork. As if it’s imperative he find the right one, despite the multitude of less adequate substitutes that he can grasp. Attention is shot, head someplace formless. Uprooted, like a sapling in a hurricane.

Carter gives her thanks, turns back to stand beside him, crisp stars and stripes held to her chest and unbearable to look at. She remains sober, poised. She’s had her share of funerals, of late. Maybe it gets better with practice.

Out of the corner of his eye, Bucky registers Wilson offering his hand, registers Carter taking it and holding on tight. It helps to focus on the details around him, the feeling of mowed grass under his borrowed dress shoes, the smells of industry, of flowers both wilting and fresh, and turned earth. Gasoline, leather, new break discs on at least one car or motorcycle inside a mile. A dozen perfumes, a few colognes, old sweat, old and new tears. Those help. The smell of death is too normal, isn’t always real.

He hears Barton breathing regularly behind him, beside Maksimov, heart-rate slow, limbs still—Bucky’s impressed he can stand straight with the amount of painkillers he’s on for his crushed hand. He hears Lang’s relentless fidgeting with his tie, pointed out by the _swish swish_ of fabric against fabric, van Dyne breathing quietly beside him. Miss Potts’ carefully manicured fingernails clicking against one another, needle sharp heels digging into the earth as she shifts her weight, T’Challa’s silent vigil beside her punctuated by the buzzing of a cell-phone that goes unanswered and the utter stillness of the Dora Milaje five steps behind him. 

Farther back, and out of sight: the clicking and grinding of cameras, the chatter of the press circling the cemetery’s perimeter like sharks smelling blood in the water. Police cars in the street and the _chak-chak-chak_ of news station helicopters in the air. The latter makes his hands curl to fists, involuntarily, on every pass.

Bucky keeps his breathing even, his heart-rate even, stares ahead at the priest letting everyone know the man that isn’t, actually, in the box being lowered into the ground is dead dead dead, like they missed it, like they don’t know, didn’t see the switch flip off. Weren’t there to hold the body until it was cold.

At some point it stops working. It must have—he misses the end of it. The next thing he knows is Wilson calling his name, frowning. Tone suggests it's not the first time. Response time inadequate.

Behind Wilson there's Carter, flag still held against her chest, a hand not very subtly curled around a gun inside the pocket of her coat. She’s twenty long paces away form Wilson’s back, angled to the right. Far enough she might get a couple shots in, if she’s fast enough on the draw. Everyone else gives him a wide berth.

Bucky blinks, let's go of the breath somehow stuck in his chest. His left fist uncurls from around the flesh-and-bone wrist, where it's been adding a fresh bruise to the mottled, yellow-green skin when he wasn't looking. “Sorry,” he says, like it means anything.

“S’alright, man,” Wilson says, shakes his head, smiles in easy absolution. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “You just checked out for a second, it happens. You with me now?” He looks tired, sad, worried. Tired.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, nods. “Yeah, I'm here.”

Carter relaxes, takes an empty hand out of her jacket pocket, and flushes when Bucky nods in acknowledgement. He doesn’t mind. He’s glad, actually. It’s good that someone’s willing to put him down if it comes to that.

“Come on, then,” Wilson gestures ahead, moves to the road bisecting the field and its white rows of kids dumb enough to go die when they were told. “Don't really wanna be here more than I gotta.”

There's a line of handshakes and goodbyes between him and the car. Everyone's polite. Their faces blur and melt into each other, and Bucky can feel their worry like a shock collar tightening around his throat, cutting off the air by increments. Poor sad thing, left all alone. They pity him.

Can't even resent it. It's an appropriate response. If A, then B. He's pitiful, so they pity him. Almost as much as they mistrust him still; almost as much as they fear him, and it’s not—

They all mourn, they'll all miss him. They will all hurt. The thing is, at some point they'll stop hurting and stop mourning, and they'll move on. The rest of the world’s already rebuilding.

Bucky can't move on. He knows that, in his bones. His unnatural life stretches on into a horizon that keeps moving back with every step he takes, but he's rooted to the spot, stuck six feet under in an empty box under a meaningless chunk of polished rock.

The thing is, _the_ _problem_ is, when you remove alien objects apparently older than the universe from the equation, Bucky's pretty much impossible to kill.

__

 

T'Challa waits until they’re alone. Until Wilson has moved to the driver’s seat and Carter’s slid into the back, closed the door behind her. Until everyone else has gone off to lick their wounds in private. He takes hold of Bucky’s hand, the human one, in both of his. Steps close, singularly unafraid. His look is clear and calm, steady and worse than all the others.

(It’s the look of a man used to leading men. The look of a man that’s worthy of their loyalty).

It hurts to be looked at, and be seen. T’Challa, says, “The dead no longer suffer, Sergeant. When your head is clear again, think on that. And should you find yourself needing anything I have within my power to give, I am at your service.” He smiles, and it’s rueful. It’s brilliant. “It was a pleasure to finally fight by your side instead of against you, despite the circumstances.”

Bucky nods, and looks away and says nothing. He owes, and owes, and owes, and there is nothing to say.

__

 

At the door of the car, Bucky’s spine prickles, the edges of his vision expand as he lets go of focus in favour of coverage. The shadows beneath the oak tree sway and the wind picks up a smell like spices, the rough scratch of skin against bark.

Bucky shifts on his feet, stance widening by millimetres, tensing on instinct. His left hand curls into a fist; his right remains loose, pulled back to the angle that'll let him grab the knife strapped to the dip of his back, under his jacket, as efficiently as he can.

The shadows acknowledge his attention. Natalia Romanova steps out onto the path, dressed impeccably, all in black. She stares back, unflinching and unsmiling, steel in her eyes. And Bucky knows her. Would know her, now, if he was struck deaf, and dumb, and blind.

His memories are a litany built out of the screams of the people he’s hurt, words of fire from the mouths of those he’s killed and tortured and made in his image, twisted out of their humanity. Her voice is the loudest of all.

Bucky stands down, lets his shoulders drop and his hands go limp against his sides, palms turned out. Makes a show of relaxing.

Romanova tilts her head in answer, breaks eye contact. She turns to go.


End file.
